This is the second post in my Reading Critically series. The article that follows is a bit longer than the first (its hard to find articles that are as short as SAT passages), but it is a pretty interesting piece. I will pose the questions below, but first a couple of things to note:

The passage is long, but some parts of it can definitely be skimmed, especially once you get a sense for what the author is trying to say. Again this is one of the advantages of reading critically – once you understand the author’s overall purpose and can get a sense for the function of things in the passage (like the paragraphs) it allows you to really speed up because although you might gloss over some of the details, you will know why those details are there. This is a key skill both on the SAT and in real life (especially college). Once you realize that you should not be reading in order to memorize all of the details (which you wouldn’t be able to do anyway) it allows you to read much more quickly and focus on the big picture.

The other thing to point out with this passage is to pay close attention to the author’s tone. The tone on this passage may be obvious to you or it may not, but the author’s tone is always directly related to his or her overall purpose. Ok, the link is below and questions are below that…

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/millennial-mongers_805310.html?nopager=1

1) What is the author’s overall purpose?

The answer to this question relates directly to question 4 below. Many people would read this and think that it is a passage about the millennial generation. That discussion fills up a lot of space in the passage, but the author is really mounting an attack on what he calls “generational analysts,” people who try to characterize an entire generation as having certain qualities in common.

The passage is difficult because the author uses a lot of sarcasm so at times it may seem like he actually believes the generalizations that are being floated about millennials, but he is actually very critical of the idea that a generation can be characterized by any overarching description.

One of the things that helps a lot is to actually read and think about the title of the article: Millennial Mongers – The crackpot social science of generational analysis.  The fact that the author refers to generational analysis as a “crackpot science” gives you a huge heads up in understanding where the passage is going. This is a really important point because it is analogous to reading the “blurb” that precedes all of the medium and long passages on the SAT. That blurb will often give you a really good indication of what the purpose of the passage is, so it is essentially that you always read and consider it before reading the passage.

2) How would you characterize the author’s tone in this passage? And what words or sentences most reveal the author’s tone to you (i.e., what words or sentences help support your view of the author’s tone)?

The author’s tone is definitely negative – he offers a pretty harsh criticism of what he calls “generational analysts.” Again many SAT takers are not used to such negative passages and tend to miss how negative they are when they see them, but such passages definitely do appear on the SAT. But I would go further and say that this passage is not only negative, it is mocking, derisive, and even humorous and sarcastic.

For example at the end of paragraph for, he sort of jokingly and mockingly calls the millennials “Generation Not Nice! At All!” And his comment, “Now that we have the correct application figures—which seem to prove that millennials will dive out a second-story window rather than face a Peace Corps recruiter tapping at the front door—should we continue to call them, as the Times still does, Generation Nice?” is meant to be both humorous and critical. And the entire paragraph that begins with, “It’s never pretty when journalists cross-pollinate with academics” is again meant to be both funny and extremely derisive.

3) In the second paragraph, why does the author put the words “public intellectual” in quotation marks?

This is a very common and difficult type of function question that appears on the SAT. It focuses on the author’s purpose or intention of doing something. So why did the author choose to put “public intellectual” in quotation marks? In this case he is sort of making fun of the term and suggesting that it is of dubious validity. What would it even mean to be a public intellectual? He probably believes that that is how Tanenhaus would describe himself but he is basically mocking the title.

4) In the passage, is the author more concerned with the millennial generation itself or of the work of those, such as Tanenhaus, who make sweeping statements about generations?

This is a key question that some people may find to be very easy and obvious and other people would completely miss. Students who are not used to reading critically and believe that reading non-fiction like this is about “learning” the facts might really miss the point and believe that this is about the millennial generation itself. It is not. The author of the passage is critical of those, such as Tanenhaus, who try to define generations. He believes that it is impossible to generalize and apply characteristics to a generation as a whole and he even suggests that it is silly to try to claim that a particular generation is defined as falling between specific birth years. So the passage is not really about millennials even though he mentions them a lot in the passage. It is aimed at the people who he believes foolishly and almost embarrassingly try to characterize the millennial generation as a whole.

5) What is the purpose of the paragraph that begins, “I read on.” (paragraph 5)? Could you have inferred what the paragraph was going to about (thus allowing you to skim it) and if so, how?

This is a really critical point about the importance of reading actively. The previous paragraph begins to give examples of the varieties of characterizations that have been applied to the millennial generation (and that contrast the view of it being Generation Nice). So when he writes, “I read on,” this suggests that he is going to give more examples of what he has found in his reading on the millennial generation and the wide variety of description that can be found. At that point you can skim that entire paragraph and you will see that the purpose of that paragraph was indeed to just give more examples of the diverse and conflicting ways in which the generation has been characterized. Why does he do that? Well just go back to his overall purpose. He is showing that there is nothing even close to a consensus on how the millennial generation should really be characterized in order to support his point that the whole enterprise of analyzing and describing an entire generation is silly and pointless.

6) What is the purpose of the 6th paragraph (“You thought the stock market collapse of 2008…”)?

Again this paragraph can probably be skimmed because it just continues the theme of the previous paragraph: to show the diverse and conflicting interpretations of the millennial generation.

7) What does the author think of “self-reporting”?

This is another good example of how understanding the big picture and the author’s purpose and opinion help you read more efficiently and understand things that you might otherwise not completely understand. We already know that the author is deeply critical of generational analysis. Well right after he introduces “self-reporting” he states, “It is a staple of generational analysis.” So without even knowing what it is, we already know that he is critical of it. That makes it much easier to understand the description of “self-reporting” that follows since we already have an idea of what the author thinks of it. So when he says, A respondent tends to look pretty good when he describes himself,” that is not a good thing (even though it sounds like it is)!!!

8) What is the purpose of the 3 examples that the author gives in paragraph 14 (“It is a cohort that embraces…….home theater in Scarsdale”)?

The key to this (as with most function questions) is to look at the surrounding lines, especially the ones that precede the text in question. The author suggests in the previous sentence that it is impossible to characterize the millions of people that make up an entire generation (one that he says is “tossed together using nothing more than two arbitrary dates as boundaries”). So the point of the 3 examples is to show just how different 3 people from that generation could be. And again, this is to support the larger point that trying to interpret or characterize an entire generation is absurd.

9) Do you agree with the author’s analysis?

This is an interesting question because the author makes a very strong case for the absolute ridiculousness of trying to characterize an entire generation or even trying to draw the boundary lines of a particular generation, but I must admit that despite all of that I do feel like certain age groups have some similar qualities. Admittedly you can’t draw a line and say anyone born after a certain year is necessarily part of a particular generation and obviously no matter what generalities you point to there are going to be millions of people within that age group who don’t fit that generalization, but there do seem to be characteristics that are common in certain age groups (whether we call them generations or not).

This is obviously my opinion, but the point I want to make is that we don’t need to agree completely (or at all) with an author and part of reading critically is about realizing that when an author states an opinion it is only that: an opinion. We don’t necessarily need to agree with that opinion. What we need to do is consider how the author supports that opinion and then make a decision for ourselves.

This is the second post in my Reading Critically series. The article that follows is a bit longer than the first (its hard to find articles that are as short as SAT passages), but it is a pretty interesting piece. I will pose the questions below, but first a couple of things to note:

The passage is long, but some parts of it can definitely be skimmed, especially once you get a sense for what the author is trying to say. Again this is one of the advantages of reading critically – once you understand the author’s overall purpose and can get a sense for the function of things in the passage (like the paragraphs) it allows you to really speed up because although you might gloss over some of the details, you will know why those details are there. This is a key skill both on the SAT and in real life (especially college). Once you realize that you should not be reading in order to memorize all of the details (which you wouldn’t be able to do anyway) it allows you to read much more quickly and focus on the big picture.

The other thing to point out with this passage is to pay close attention to the author’s tone. The tone on this passage may be obvious to you or it may not, but the author’s tone is always directly related to his or her overall purpose. Ok, the link is below and questions are below that…

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/millennial-mongers_805310.html?nopager=1

1) What is the author’s overall purpose?

2) How would you characterize the author’s tone in this passage? And what words or sentences most reveal the author’s tone to you (i.e., what words or sentences help support your view of the author’s tone)?

3) In the second paragraph, why does the author put the words “public intellectual” in quotation marks?

4) In the passage, is the author more concerned with the millennial generation itself or of the work of those, such as Tanenhaus, who make sweeping statements about generations?

5) What is the purpose of paragraph 5 (“I read on.”)? Could you have inferred what the paragraph was going to about as you began it (thus allowing you to skim the paragraph) and if so, how?

6) What is the purpose of the 6th paragraph (“You thought the stock market collapse of 2008…”)?

7) What does the author think of “self-reporting”?

8) What is the purpose of the 3 examples that the author gives in paragraph 14 (“It is a cohort that embraces…….home theater in Scarsdale”)?

9) Do you agree with the author’s analysis?

For analysis of the above passage and “answers” to the above questions, see the Analysis Post.

Continuing with my posts aimed at helping students read more critically both on the SAT and beyond, I wanted to address the concept of reading actively. Reading critically is a skill that requires a lot of practice and there are a lot of subtleties to it. It is definitely not something that comes overnight and even though this post is going to get into the issue of reading actively, that skill is too difficult to really do justice to in a single blog post. I would like to describe some of the aspects of reading actively, but this post will not by itself teach you how to read actively. I will write future posts that build on this one and that give more guidance on how to read actively and critically.

First lets describe reading passively. When you read a book for enjoyment, say a Harry Potter book or something like that, you are probably reading passively. You just sit there and read the words and let the book do all the work – you just kind of sit back and enjoy. When you read actively you take an active role in the process – you are generally searching for answers as you read and asking questions such as “why did the author write that” or “what do I expect the purpose of the next paragraph to be?”

A key element in all of this is having an awareness of the author who is behind all of the writing. I was recently tutoring someone and when I explained to her that the passages on the SAT all came from somewhere and that they were not created just for the SAT she was shocked. She had no idea that there were real authors who cared about all of these topics and who actually chose to write about them for a reason. When you read actively, one of the first things that you need to focus on is, “why did the author write this passage?” The SAT will often ask you that directly on many of the passages and even if it doesn’t the answer to that question will be relevant to many of the questions they ask.

Another key awareness that many students lack when they first start working on SAT Critical Reading sections is that most of the passages are non-fiction. The SAT usually has 1 fiction passage and then all of the rest of the passages are non-fiction. This is important because although reading actively and pondering the author’s purpose is important on SAT fiction passages, it is far more important on the non-fiction ones since again these author’s actually chose to write about something that exists in the real world (whether it is about astronomy, gender studies, psychology, or whatever) and they did so for a reason. Whether they wanted to debunk a theory, describe a phenomenon, challenge conventional wisdom, or achieve some other purpose, they chose to write about the topic, they care about it, and they have something that they think is important to say.

There is one more thing to note that makes focusing on the author and his or her intention very difficult on the SAT: often the passages are themselves talking about other people, sometimes authors! This can get very confusing because your focus needs to be on the author who is writing the passage, not the person or perhaps author who is the subject of the passage. So if the author of the passage describes J. R. R. Tolkien as a riveting author, you must view that not as a statement of fact about Tolkien but as an expression of the author’s opinion (the author of the passage, not Tolkien!). It can definitely get confusing!

Again I am not aiming to give this a full treatment here, but one of the basic problems that people have when they read on the SAT (and elsewhere) is they read it as though they are reading a textbook where the goal is generally to convey facts to the reader. On SAT passages and in a lot of the reading that you will do in college the reading is very different. You need to focus less on facts and information that is contained in the writing and more on the motivations of the person who did the writing. This means a greater focus on the big picture, the author’s purpose, and on the purpose of the smaller elements of the passage (and remember that the all of the smaller elements of the passage serve to achieve the larger aim that the author set for himself or herself). There will be future posts that build on this discussion, but for now try to be aware when you are reading SAT passages, especially the non-fiction ones (which means almost every passage on the SAT), that there is an author who sat down to write that particular passage for a reason and that your main goal is not to learn the information that is being conveyed but to understand what the author’s intention and overall purpose was in writing the passage.